A week or so ago, I began final preparations for what will likely be the last desktop computer I will ever own. After a sudden bout of erratic behaviour, a tech dude confirmed that the hard drive was beginning to fail. It was going to be time to say farewell…

Luckily, we were able to salvage the contents of the hard drive – including (but not even slightly limited to) over 12,000 e-mails. Cyberspace has given me a whole new world of things to save, as a lifelong saver…

I’d have to go back in the archives to see how long I’ve had that old relic, but it’s easily been 5 or more years – an eternity in computer years. Since that time, we’ve supplemented the little beggar's workload with a couple of laptops, and enjoyed the freedom that owning a portable computer allows us for travelling. We even got into wireless internet, thanks in no small part to a certain “gg”, who was light years ahead of us on that one. Now, we are often wireless, and we love it.

That old computer helped with the creation of my first book, and held the meat and potatoes of a few more, upcoming. I’ve got years of humour columns and articles pitched and/or sold to magazines and newspapers on that old hard drive. I had a long-broken link to a dancing hamster on my “Favourites” internet link. Never again will I be able to play FreeCell, where my High Score was an insurmountable number unheard of in Western civilization – writer’s block is a dreadful blight for a creative mind…

And so now, with our remaining computers free of desktop confines, and the (future, delayed) Mac laptop that will one day (sometime this fall) fill the empty space below my fingertips, I think I can truly say that my desktop computing days are a thing of the past. Which is great, because there was much too long a walk from my office to the TV room, for “The Price Is Right” every morning…

Chow for now!!